


Gone is the Gilding

by avislightwing



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Post-Series, but do I care? no, honestly probably ooc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 14:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10766016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avislightwing/pseuds/avislightwing
Summary: Gilderoy Lockhart regains his memories at long last to discover that everything he knows has changed - and not for the better.





	Gone is the Gilding

It happened like a flood:  slowly, small rivulets lapping at the beach, then a sudden wave that swept him away, leaving him stunned. Flat on his back. He woke up one day and knew who he was, after years of vacant smiles and relearning joined-up writing and the nice nurse bringing him back to the closed ward.

_Gilderoy_ , he thought, staring at the photos he’d gotten the nurse to fix the ceiling. Staring at his own pearly whites and sky-blue eyes. _Gilderoy Lockhart_.

Lockhart had missed the war, Voldemort’s rise and fall. He’d missed five years of his successors. He’d missed his own fall from fame – Flourish and Blotts didn’t stock his books anymore, though he was pleased to discover Gladys Gudgeon still wrote to him weekly.

He soon realized how much he’d missed.

_Voldemort?_ he said, astonished. _Surely not._

_Yes,_ they told him. _And Harry Potter defeated him once and for all._

_I taught The Boy Who Lived, you know,_ he told everyone he could. _Taught him everything he knows. I helped him defeat the basilisk._

No one listened to him.

He’d missed more than the defeat of a monster.

_Dumbledore?_ he said in a numb kind of trance. _Surely not._

_Yes,_ they told him. _Killed at the top of the tallest Astronomy tower by Severus Snape._

_I never did like Snape,_ Lockhart was quick to say, until they told him the whole thing was orchestrated by Dumbledore himself, it was decided between them months beforehand. Severus Snape, once more infamous than Sirius Black (though now both are dead), has become a hero of the Wizarding world. Whether he deserves it or not is anyone’s guess.

It isn’t just celebrities whose death Lockhart missed.

_Colin?_ Lockhart said, a sinking sensation in his stomach. _Colin Creevey?_

_Yes_ , they told him. _He snuck back into the castle to fight in the Battle of Hogwarts._

_I still have some of his photos,_ Lockhart started, then stopped. Some of his memories were slow coming back, but he could clearly remember the small boy with the camera, one of the basilisk’s first victims. He remembered how the child trailed after Harry, shutter clicking. Lockhart got someone to get him the obituary:  Survived by his father, Gavin Creevey, and a younger brother, Dennis Creevey, 13.

Dead. As dead as Severus Snape, and Sirius Black, and Dumbledore, and Voldemort.

Remus Lupin.

_Your successor. Member of the Order of the Phoenix. He and his wife Tonks – they left behind a little boy, Teddy, cute kid._

Fred Weasley.

_His twin’s still alive, ear and all. Runs a joke shop. You can see one of his family going in the door any day of the week. Think he gets lonely._

While Lockhart was signing photos, children died.

He started to wish for the peace, the unknowingness, of amnesia and the closed ward. He missed the time before, when his biggest worry was a cageful of Cornish pixies getting loose in a classroom.

 

“Professor?”

He looked up from the newspaper clippings. “Miss Granger, isn’t it?” A dim memory seeps into his brain. “You came to visit me in the ward. You and Mr. Weasley and Mr. Potter.”

“Yes.”

He finds it hard to reconcile the girl he remembers from his class to the young woman in front of him now. She looks old – wrinkles between her eyebrows and tired brown eyes. There’s almost no trace of the infatuated schoolgirl he taught.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” he says. “The last thing I remembered was that you were petrified.” He smiles, no teeth showing. A pale ghost of the grin that won Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile five years in a row. “You were also in the hospital wing that year because you were covered in fur, if I remember correctly.”

“You sent me a card,” Hermione says quietly. “I still have it.”

There’s a long moment of silence, broken only by the slow drip of water from the ceiling. Lockhart had discovered that most of his money had been seized as unlawful gains, redistributed to those he Obliviated. He was only left with enough to rent a small, leaky flat. But he had his memories. And his life.

“Can you imagine what it’s like,” he says, “to wake up and discover you’ve missed… everything?”

“I don’t. But my parents do.”

Lockhart looks up at her. Her hair is just as frizzy as it was when she was a child, but her teeth are smaller now.

“I Obliviated them so I could help Harry and Ron defeat Voldemort. You might have read about it in the papers.”

He remembers now:  _Mr. and Mrs. Granger found safely in Australia. Memories restored._

“I didn’t know if I’d be able to lift the spell, you know,” she says. “I kept thinking about you, shut up in that ward for years. What if I’d condemned my parents to the same fate? I thought about just leaving them in Australia – letting them live out their lives without me. But I couldn’t.”

“I’m glad it worked out.” He doesn’t know what else to say. “Do you know… I don’t suppose you know if they managed to lift the spells I put on all those people?”

“I think they did, mostly,” Hermione says. “You could ask someone from Magical Law Enforcement. I know Shacklebolt. I could put you in touch.”

Fudge wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t Minister anymore, and his successor, Scrimgeour, was very dead. His obituary was in one of the papers stacked on Lockhart’s nightstand. Tortured to death during the Ministry takeover.

“I would appreciate that,” Lockhart says carefully.

“There’s a lot of research on Memory Charms going on right now, actually,” Hermione says, chewing on her lip. She doesn’t seem to notice she’s doing it. “Muggles call it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, what we have. I looked it up. Some people think Memory Charms might help.”

“Do you think…” Lockhart falters. One thing he remembers very clearly is the kidnapping of the Weasley girl. Ginevra. Ginny. She lived, but her brother is dead, and another of them – Lockhart saw the pictures in the _Prophet._ Mauled by Fenrir Greyback.

Beauty doesn’t matter anymore. Not beauty like his. But there was one other asset he had to give.

“Do you think I could help?” he asks her.

“I think you might,” she says. “It won’t make you famous, though.”

Lockhart thinks of the famous people in the papers he’s collected. Maimed. Tortured. Murdered. No one’s been on the front page for marketing a range of hair-care potions in a long time.

“Fame is overrated,” he says.

Hermione smiles faintly. “You’re telling me.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is only my second HP fic, so comments would be welcome! Thanks for reading!
> 
> Find me on tumblr as birdiethebibliophile


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